Northern Ireland: Refutation Number 4539

Eamonn McDonagh
Z-Word Blog
30 August '10

Regular readers of this blog will know that we have repeatedly argued against the usefulness of the Northern Ireland analogy applied to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nevertheless, like the corpse of a drowned dog, it keeps bobbing to the surface again and again. The latest example is by Ali Abunimah in the New York Times. With a deep sigh and a heavy step I’ll now proceed to take it apart.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists.

This is false. Only the most extreme factions of unionism, those associated with illegal terrorist groups, rejected any compromise with Catholic nationalists. The rest only baulked at whatever they perceived as a first step towards the end of the Union. And far from supporting Unionist intransigence successive British governments sought to encourage their Northern Irish citizens to reach an acceptable internal compromise.

The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom.

Saying that the IRA had close ties to Sinn Féin is like saying that the United States Army has close ties to the United Sates government, with the important difference that in the Sinn Féin - IRA relationship it was always the latter that made the key decisions. Furthermore, the British government negotiated with Sinn Féin - IRA on a cyclical basis (fight a bit, talk a bit fight a bit) at least as far back as the Cheyne Walk talks of 1972. And finally, the great bulk of the violence carried out by the IRA occurred in Northern Ireland and was inflicted on ordinary people.

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